Innovation & Creativity

That is the demanding filter we use to assess candidates for our annual Most Innovative Companies list. It is a brutal, unyielding framework—directly in keeping with today’s business reality. Only a handful of companies repeat on our main Top 50 list year to year because the pace of change is so intense. Successful enterprises struggle to outdo themselves; new entrants with new ideas and new momentum are constantly emerging, demanding attention.

The best examples of street art in 2012 (48 pictures. National Flags Created From the Foods Each Country Is Commonly Associated With. Feeling hungry?

You will be after looking through this creative collection of food photography by Australian advertising agency WHYBIN\TBWA. To promote the Sydney International Food Festival, which is Australia’s largest food festival which had almost a million attendees last year and chefs from all over the world, the imaginative team re-created 17 national flags using foods common to each nation. Basil, pasta, and tomatoes create the stripes on Italy’s flag, while hot dogs and buns were used for the U.S., olives and feta cheese for Greece, and curries with rice for India and Indonesia. See Also Man Follows Girlfriend All Around the World What’s even more impressive than the simpler striped flags is seeing the clever ways the team improvised stars and symbols of the more complex flags.
Finland has an education system the US should envy – and learn from. A new book has attracted much interest in the Washington DC, especially on Capitol Hill, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?.

The book arrives after Finland scored first in science and second in reading and math on the standardized test administered by the Program for International Student Assessment. Conducted among industrialized nations every three years, American students finished 25th in math, 17th in science and 12th in reading on the latest PISA assessment. Obviously, in our global economy, this nation's international educational attainment is discouraging for our future prospects.
Joe Stewart, Creative Director At Huge, On Making User Experience Pop. NYC Subways Deploy A Touch-Screen Network, Complete With Apps. Not so long ago, we featured a radical proposal for New York City’s payphones.

The criticism we sensed was that this networked, touch-screen system--equipped with cameras and Wi-Fi--was too too sci-fi for a city of today. But the designers behind that vision--Control Group--have been hired by New York’s MTA to bring a very similar plan to their subways. Starting this year, 90 touch-screen kiosks will make their way to thoroughfares like Grand Central Station and hip stops like Bedford Avenue. Together, they’ll make a beta network for 2 million commuters and tourists a day.

DNA Test for Ancestry from National Geographic. Join the more than half a million people who have already taken part in National Geographic's groundbreaking Genographic Project—contribute to this real-time scientific effort and learn more about yourself than you ever thought possible.

About the test National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Spencer Wells and team designed Geno 2.0 based on the new technologies and insights that emerged since the launch of the Genographic Project in 2005. Using an exclusive, custom-built genotyping chip, we test nearly 150,000 DNA markers that have been specifically selected to provide unprecedented ancestry-related information.
Kick-Ass Writer Mark Millar on Why Superhero Genre Was Due for Overhaul. Mark Millar messes with the superhero genre again in Supercrooks.

By Liat Clark, Wired UK Mark Millar has been reduced to a schoolboy. On a particularly windy day in Glasgow he blusters down the phone to Wired.co.uk: “My friends are down there and I want to be with them, but I have to do my homework first.” [partner id="wireduk"]
The amazing stories of the world’s most iconic cameras. Not all cameras are created equal.

We take a look at some that changed photography forever. Cameras are not just functioning things; a few have also gained iconic – even mythological – status. This has been either because of those who used them, the historic events they captured, their giant technological leaps or simply downright beautiful design. Everyone will have an opinion about their favourite camera, but here’s the ones we think make the grade. Bullet Proof… Literally. The 11th Principle of Good Design. I talk about Dieter Rams a lot.

Partly because his (at the time) humble and understated work now defines the visual language of Apple’s entire product line, and partly because products he designed 52 years ago are still being made today. I mean, what the actual fuck is up with that. Vitsoe 606 Shelving system, designed in 1960 by Dieter Rams. They still make them today, and to the same spec. In 1970, Rams decided that he needed a way to objectively assess whether his work was “good design.”

7 Pearls Of Startup Wisdom From Investors and Innovators Who Matter. From the art of the pitch to a smooth sale and everything in between, these seven tenets come straight from the annals of successful startups.

Last week, Vancouver's GROW 2012 conference convened some all-stars of the startup scene, stirring together corporate leads from Indiegogo, Eventbrite, Zite, Paypal, Cheezburger Inc. and more with infamous super angel Dave McClure and a smattering of high profile venture capitalists from firms like Bessemer and the Founders Fund. We crunched it all up into seven bits of bite-sized startup wisdom that bear repeating: 1.
By the book! The 5 best movies based on novels. Recently, the movie business has all been about comic books and Lycra.

But what about the much loved novel? The ability to check out countless books and films on your smartphone is one of the great things about living in the future.
What Google Gets That Others Don’t: Innovation Evolves Customers. Customers don’t just adopt innovations; they alter them, adapt to them, and are changed by them. Like economic Charles Darwins, successful innovators strive to observe and understand how their customers evolve. Pick any product or service that matters. Google’s search engine. Credit cards.
Beta List. Innovation / Business Model Innovation. I attended Alex' workshop in Boston in oct 2011 on this. Phenomenal ! Started using this for my clients !

Art

The best street art in Helsinki. Since today is Friday and I’m sure many of you are already looking forward to the weekend, I’ve decided to showcase some of the amazing street art I discussed in my last post about Helsinki. These avant-garde images are created by local graffiti artists in the Suvilahti neighborhood. My favorite thing about the artwork I found in Helsinki is the variety of styles used across the designated graffiti wall. There’s also a vibrancy to many of these images, which adds to the overall effect of each message being displayed. Wide-Eyed and Beautiful. Why Branding Is An Artifact Of The Past. A short while ago, I wrote an article on this site suggesting that you can’t build a brand simply by setting out to build a brand.

And in fact, thinking too much about brands can actually get in the way of the real business of your company. I suggested that you try an experiment: Stop talking about brands for a month, and see what happens.
Inspirational Hand Painted Body Art. Cartoon time! A day in the life of an animator. The art of animation is a lot older than you think. Walt Disney might have brought it to the masses in the 1920s, but the first projected animation came courtesy of a machine called the magic lantern invented way back in 1650.

Things have changed immeasurably since then.
The story of the ‘secret’ room at Pixar, frequented by Steve Jobs and many other celebrities. Truthfully, I thought everyone knew about the ‘Lucky 7 Lounge’. It’s a secret room at Pixar that’s really not so secret now. But I took a quick poll of some friends and coworkers and drew a blank, so here goes.
Creating Start-Up Success. Business Model Alchemist. 13 sites to get your creative juices flowing. Does Creativity Require Constraints?
Magic Hours: Tom Bissell on the Secrets of Creators and Creation. Www.strategy-business.com/media/file/00078.pdf. Www.strategy-business.com/media/file/sb65-11404-Global-Innovation-1000-Why-Culture-Is-Key.pdf.